


End of the Day

by Jinmukang



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: A big f u to marvel, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Fix-It, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I see their decision and seeing that it's a stupid ass decision I've elected to ignore it, Irondad, Tony Stark Has A Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2020-02-10 13:39:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18661510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jinmukang/pseuds/Jinmukang
Summary: ENDGAME SPOILERS READ AT OWN RISKHe should be dead. He used all the infinity stones, and he's just a human. He should be dead, but he isn't.





	End of the Day

**Author's Note:**

> Endgame was an amazing movie, I just thought it could have ended better :)

The first thing he thinks when his eyes slowly creak open is that he shouldn’t be alive. He doesn’t know why he thinks that, only that it’s at the forefront of his mind, that it’s the only thing that’s clear to him when the white ceiling above him slowly comes into focus. He shouldn’t be alive, and there is a reason for that. A good reason. Something… something final and horrible happened. He remembers… pain shooting up his arm and an explosion, a flash of light. He remembers seeing the kid’s face, tears and snot running down their cheeks and chin, he remembers wanting to say something, something important, but then Pepper came into his view, shining as beautiful as the sun, and Morgan, sweet Morgan, he can see her in her mother’s eyes.

“You can rest now,” she says, and he isn’t inclined to argue. He’s so tired, in pain, and-

He should be dead. He used the infinity stones… all of them. And he’s just a human.

He should be dead.

He blinks and glances around the room, his short-lived theory of this being heaven is torn up like a scrap piece of paper when he sees the monitors and the wires piling around the room and connecting to his body. He can feel the pinch on an IV in his arm… his left arm. He can’t feel the right. In fact, he can’t feel a whole lot of the right side of his body.

He looks down and the heart monitor gives away his jumping heart when he sees nothing where his arm should be, his hospital gown falls off his shoulder strangely and he’s hit with a strange sense of nausea. His arm is gone. It looks so unnatural and he can’t stop looking at it.

His… arm is gone?

How could his entire arm be gone?

What happened?

Why is he alive?

There’s a clicking noise as the white door across his room suddenly opens, he can only lay there in his mess of wires and blankets as a woman dressed in white medical clothes steps into the room. Dr Helen Cho stops in her tracks with wide eyes when her gaze falls on him. He’s almost tempted to lift his arm to wave, but as consciousness continues to return to him, so does the pain. He settles for smiling slightly, the right corner of his mouth feels stiff.

“Tony,” she breathes. She lifts her hand up to her ear and presses against a comm, Tony wonders where she got that, it looks advanced and he doesn’t remember inventing it. “He’s awake, send in the team.”

He doesn’t have time to question who the team is before she’s quickly walking over to his bedside, nimble fingers checking over the monitors and machines before she’s suddenly flashing a light in his eyes.

He hisses at the assault to his pupils and she makes a clicking noise with her tongue before she presses a button by the side of his bed. He finds himself being raised into a sitting position. “I’m going to check your stump, how are you feeling?”

“Oh, I’m al-left,” he says, or he tries to say. His mouth doesn’t seem to want to work with him and it comes out a bit lazily and slurred. However, she does smile slightly; he’s happy that even though he doesn’t seem to be able to speak the best at the moment the joke still was able to be understood.

He lets out a small chuckle and hisses when the action puts fire in his lungs. He coughs and goes to lift his arm to cover his mouth, but the one he tries to move is the one currently missing and probably stuffed in a dumpster somewhere and that both horrifies and fascinates him at the same time.

Cho gently undoes the tie around his shoulder and pulls the gown down to reveal a mess of bandages. “On a scale from one to ten, how much pain are you in?”

“Ahh, six…”

His voice is scratchy, his throat aches. With each passing second he notices something that’s in pain, but none of it is… agonizing. Just sore, stiff, numb, and bruised. Nothing too bad, but still enough to make him wince at every move.

Cho hums in content as her fingers go over his bandages… over his… stump. He watches in interest as she undoes the cloth and begins to unwind.

“What… happened?” Tony asks and Cho stops her work long enough to glance at him.

“What do you remember?”

He sighs and closes his eyes for a second. “Everything. I should be dead.”

“You were with every single hero in the universe, Tony,” Cho says as she returns to unwinding his wound. He catches a flash of scarred flesh colored an odd purple color. “Do you really think they were going to let you die?”

-o-o-o-o-

Turns out, Doctor Strange straight up teleported Tony to Wakanda as he was teetering on the thread between life and death. There, Shuri, Cho, himself, and other brilliant doctors worked for four days straight to save his life. They had to amputate the arm, which stung. His hands are important to him, and if he were awake he probably would have told them to let him go or find another way, but he wasn’t awake. Pepper was. Morgan was. Peter was. May was. Happy was. They made the decision. His family made the decision so he won’t complain.

They wanted him alive, he was ready to die but they wanted him alive, so he will continue to live for them.

He isn’t allowed visitors for a few hours as Cho checks him over and makes sure everything is okay. His injuries are healing but they are extensive and numbered. His arm, or lack thereof, is the worst of them, but he has scars running up his neck and around his face, more trail down along his shoulder and side, going down towards his knee. He will need therapy along each of those areas, will need a constant supply of pain meds and scar lotion, but he will live.

The first person he sees is little Morgan, who he loves more than anything in the entire world. Loves her more than three thousand. He tells her that as Pepper walks in with tear stained cheeks.

_“I love you five thousand.”_

_“No! I love you six thousand!”_

_“I see your six thousand, and raise you one hundred thousand!”_

_“I love you one million kajillion thousand!!!”_

He doesn’t know how to best that number.

The next day is just the three of them with the occasional doctor or nurse coming into talk with him and check him over. It feels surreal, like it is all a dream and soon he’ll wake up and Pepper won’t be cuddled into his side—his left side of course, even with the absurd amount of pain meds he’s on it still aches horribly—and Morgan won’t be across the hospital room trying to figure out how to turn on the TV. Every time he blinks he almost expects to open his eyes to darkness, to nothing, or never open them again.

Yet his eyes still open and Pep’s shampoo still fills his nose as he breathes her in, rubs her shoulder with his one hand, that alone must let her know that she is the most important thing to him right now. She hums in content and presses herself against him further, though she’s gentle not to touch his scars and bruises.

The girl named Shuri came in once or twice to ask how he is doing and to show him her plans for a new prosthetic arm. He turns her down though, saying that he thinks he’s done now and he doesn’t need it. Pepper gives him a disbelieving look, probably already knowing that he’s planning out his own design for an arm and he doesn’t trust anyone else’s work. Shuri doesn’t look offended, she just smiles like she understands. Tony instantly likes her.

-o-o-o-o-

A week passes before anything fun happens. Pepper and Morgan returned back to their home so Pep could get back to running a company and Tony could finish recovering. They began to put him through physical therapy, specialist in Wakanda and Doctor Strange himself have fun putting Tong through the wringer as he almost has to learn how to move his body again. It’s all different, he’s off balance, his leg is stiff and thanks to a mostly scarred ear his equilibrium is thrown off, but he gets the hang of it. Eventually he’s able to walk around fairly decently with a cane in his one hand and a rather annoying limp that he can live with.

And then he’s clear two weeks later.

He remembers looking in the mirror before Doctor Strange came to work his wizard magic to teleport Tony back to his home. He thinks he looks like a very rich and more handsome version of Two-Face. Thanks to Wakandan tech and Stephen Strange’s help, most of the scarring has been smoothed down to look mostly normal but he can tell, his skin isn’t as smooth, it’s rough and leathery to the touch. He doesn’t think any amount of plastic surgery will ever be able to make his skin… human again. Iron Man has new scars now, though none of them look as aesthetically pleasing as the arc reactor had.

He supposes he will have to live with it. He’s lucky to be alive after all.

-o-o-o-o-

There’s a small homecoming party when he returns, just with his closest friends and family. It’s strange to see Cap, an old man, hobbling around with his own cane, but Tony is happy for him. He finally went off to live his life how he wanted to. How he deserves to.

To say he’s shocked to see one Natasha Romanoff there, happily making lame jokes with Clint would be an understatement. Turns out, when the soul stone was returned she was brought back, a soul for a soul. Equivalent exchange and all that. He’s just happy she’s alive, she plans to live with the Barton’s until she figures out what she wants to do with her life.

“The old man told me we both need to get a life,” she says, sipping at a a fruit flavored drink, “I told him  _you first_. I suppose it’s my turn now.”

Thor is there too, thick as ever but he promises he’s going to turn his life back around and when he returns from his trip with the Guardians he will be the strongest, most handsome Avenger there is once again. He says this while drinking a huge mug of beer, so Tony doesn’t hold his breath.

Bruce… Hulk… Bulk? Whatever, that guy is there as well, his presence is instantly a comfort. His arm is in a sling and Tony can’t help but feel a bit of jealousy towards it, but then Morgan runs up to him and grabs at his knees while Happy runs after her looking exasperated and he reminds himself that he could be gone right now. There could be a funeral in place of the party. His daughter could be doomed to grow up without a father, his wife without a husband. His arm is a tiny sacrifice when put into perspective.

He eats a whole lot of hamburgers that night.

-o-o-o-o-

A month after the universe is made whole again, Tony is finally able to reunite with Peter. He’s been looking forward to it, he knows Peter has been too. The reason it took so long is because the world was way too excited to get it’s children back, so excited, in fact, that they decided “let’s throw them all back into school immediately!” Peter has been busy with school and reconnecting with friends and getting used to the fact that some of them are now older than him. Tony hears he’s taking it like a champ with only a few bumps and bruises along the way. Thankfully his best friend Ned and his crush MJ are still his same age. The lucky kid.

The moment Tony sees Peter, it’s like the world has slowed down. He is out weeding, testing out his new arm that he caved in and made himself, when May’s car pulls in. Peter practically  _jumps_  out the  _window_  and sprints over to Tony with the widest grins and the definition of puppy eyes. Tony barely has time to stand up before he’s locked in a crushing hug from the kid probably more powerful that Steve Rogers. Actually… now that Steve is a million years old, Peter may be the strongest person in the world excluding Thor and Hulk. Those guys are outliers. They are so freakishly strong they are just not included in the data. Carol is on that list too, now that he thinks about it.

Anyway, the hug is bone crushing and gross because the kid is crying, Tony isn’t. One hundred percent, he’s definitely not crying. It’s just sweat, he’s been outside all day.

They have a simple dinner and Peter instantly hits off with Morgan which Tony couldn’t be more happy for. Morgan has grown up her whole life hearing stories about big brother Peter, her hero is Spider-Man in fact. Sure, Iron Man is great, but Iron Man is dad and that instantly lowers his cool points or something ridiculous like that.

He looks across the table as Peter is having a very avid conversation with Morgan about something or other. He can see black bags under the kids eyes, he can see how his hands tremble just a bit. Tony isn’t stupid, Peter has definitely developed some anxiety, PTSD even, from the recent events. He hasn’t touched the suit since returning back to Queens, not that Tony can blame him. May tells him that he’s being provided a therapist, Sam Wilson himself, but the recovery is going slower than what it should. It seems that with all of Peters abilities, a broken heart and a tortured mind still takes a stubborn amount of time to heal.

Whatever the case, Tony will be there for him. He’s considered Pete his son for the longest time. He’s never said it out loud though because May is the main parent, but Tony can’t change what he feels for the kid. He’s never really had the chance to tell him though, how much Tony cares for him. So much was going on even before the Snap that Tony didn’t even realize it himself how important Peter was to him, and then Peter dusted away and it was five years before Tony ever saw him again.

He decides he’s waited long enough to make it clear to Peter, especially since he could be buried in a grave right now. He tells Morgan every night how much he loves her, but Peter has hardly gotten more than a hug or two.

Before Peter and May leave, Tony puts his real arm on Peters shoulder and pulls him in for a hug. It’s amazing how quickly Peter responds, without hesitation, with a hug of his own.

“I’m proud of you kid,” Tony says, “I’m so freaking proud of you.”

He feels Peters shoulders jolt as sobs instantly break out. Tony holds him closer and puts his jaw over Peter’s head and let’s Peter get it out.

“Love you too…” Peter whispers through the tears.

-o-o-o-o-

Years pass, and Iron Man is no more. Just Tony Stark, Iron Man is a retired hero that will just be remembered and celebrated and nothing more. However, Tony still builds suits, just not for himself. The first one was for Peter, a strong spider themed metal suit made of the same technology Tony’s last one was made of. It’s smaller though, fits easily in a watch on Peter’s wrist instead of the whole arc reactor thing Tony had going on.

The next suit was for Sam, who came to Tony panicking because he couldn’t figure out how he was going to fly around with a giant vibranium shield. Tony had fun making that one, it was a challenge to find a way to make a place for the shield and still keep the wings aerodynamic. A fun challenge really, Morgan helped him out with it.

He’s made many other things, but even that he stops doing eventually, Morgan is doing it all on her own. Just reaching Junior High and she’s the smartest little person he knows besides her mom.

He’s happy, he realizes as the years pass. Peter owns Stark Tech, Steve Rogers died a tearful and happy death, Pepper is retired, Natasha is happily married with her own rascals running around, she says they’re adopted but Tony thinks they all look as mean and beautiful as she does. Clint is finally living his dream as a cowboy and nothing else. Bucky and Sam are the ring leaders of the Avengers, Wanda has found a love again, Happy and May for some reason fell in love and got married to the horror of Peter, Bulk Bruce Hulk whatever is leading the scientific world, Thor is chiseled once again and enjoying the on the go life in space, and Tony is so incredibly happy.

At the end of the day, when he takes off his prosthetic arm, painted a simple gray instead of the red and gold it used to be, he thinks about how lucky he is. He thinks about the family he’s gained over the years, how many people have touched his life and how many say he’s touched theirs. He used to be a drunk, used to be alone, used to be hated by everyone and seen as just an aloof rich playboy. Tony’s surprised Rhody dealt with all his shit for as long as he had. It was Happy’s job to, but Rhody could have left whenever he wanted, and he didn’t.

At the end of the day, he thinks about the smiling faces of his loved ones. There could have been a funeral, they could have seen that crappy apology hologram he made before the time traveling thing, they could have been facing a world with no Tony Stark.

Tony is glad he’s alive, because, once again, at the end of the day, he’s so thankful for his family, the phantom pains in his arm don’t even hurt anymore. He’s glad he took the chance to bring back what they lost, and to keep what he’s found. And have not lost his life in the process.

**Author's Note:**

> <3


End file.
